"But listen, please: supposing the coward were to try to use some weapon on you and——"
"Tush, Laura. What became of Louise? But stay: make my devoirs to her, won't you, please? I am off to keep an appointment. We are dining here this evening then? You may expect me by eight o'clock," and off he rushed. He had, in fact, been "straining at his leash," as Laura thought, watching him, ever since he had found that Jesse still was in town.
Louise came back a few moments after Blythe's departure, and she looked rueful when she saw that he had gone.
"Don't take it so excessively to heart, dear," Laura said to her. "He left all sorts of messages of apology for going without seeing you, but he had an appointment—er—I mean he had to go to——" Laura came to a somewhat feeble pause, and Louise, moreover, had noticed that her tone was a bit forced. Louise, trembling slightly, placed her hands on Laura's shoulders.
"Dear, he has gone to Curzon Street, has he not?" she asked the older woman.
"Of course he has!—why shouldn't he?" replied Laura, with a bravado which immediately gave away to tears. Louise promptly followed her example. It was merely another repetition of the age-old story wherein women weep when men go forth. And, although they of course did not know it at the time, no doubt both women enjoyed their tears quite as heartily as if they had been justified in feeling the least fear for the safety of John Blythe.
Jesse, his fiesta "in celebration of a defeat" at an end, was supervising the packing of his trunks by the young English valet obtained for him by Gaskins. His face was puffed and there were purplish pouches under his restless eyes. Three New York men, two of them somewhat youngish, the third of about Jesse's age, who had been drawn into the current of the recent gayety at the Curzon Street house, lounged about, smoking rather dismally, glancing occasionally into the mantel glass at their furred tongues and shaking their heads in the spirit of self-accusation which comes with the aftermath.
"Back to little old New York and at least a year's exemplary conduct for mine," observed the eldest of Jesse's three visitors, Jermyn Scammel, a stock broker widely known in New York for the catholicity of his views as to his associates.
"The veil for me," chorused the two younger men, sepulchrally.